*Massacre in Malaya*

The first fifth of this book is in fact the best short early economic history of Malaysia and Singapore I know, even though the focus of the book as a whole is on one colonial event, namely the 1948 Batang Kali massacre during the post-war Malayan Emergency. The next section is a superb treatment of the Japanese occupation and the political issues leading up to that occupation. This book reflects a common principle, namely that often, to learn a topic, you should read a book on an adjacent but related topic, rather than pursue your preferred topic directly. The book on the adjacent topic often will take less background knowledge for granted and explain the context more clearly for what you actually wish to learn, while getting you interested in other topics along the way.

Just about every page of this book has useful and interesting information, here is one new word I learned:

The history of the ‘Malay World’ in the centuries before the momentous fall of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 is predominantly a convoluted narrative of maritime statelets, technically thalassocracies.

“The book on the adjacent topic often will take less background knowledge for granted and explain the context more clearly for what you actually wish to learn, while getting you interested in other topics along the way.”

In this particular case, there is the problem that the present ideological focus of Malaysia and Singapore does not involve reviving old narratives on the economy or old political grievances. When Malaysians are asked to think of the prospect of the Chinese being massacred, 13th May comes far, far before Batang Kali. The past is a foreign land, but even more so in Malaysia.

…I’m keenly interested in a variety of topics, but find it difficult to read more than 50,000-60,000 books per year on my primary topics. Time is scarce for books on related adjacent topics.

Google estimates there are 134 Million current books available to American readers. Any rational book “recommendations” should therefore recognize that big-picture of book-supply versus personal-consumption capability & demand.

Also, books tend to be a cumbersome, inefficient method of communication. Most are bloated with extraneous information; the book format motivates authors towards expansive communication, rather than the concise and precise. Bloggers & essayists do better overall IMO.

The incident involved the deaths of 24 villagers. Up to 500 were killed at My Lai along with gang rapes and mutilations.

The Malayan killings also occurred just three years after a global war that killed tens of millions, including tens of thousands of civilians killed by the British in a single night of bombing over Germany.

None of which resulted in a series if investigations over many decades as the Malaya incident did.

When an author makes a wildly disproportionate comparison with no awareness of historical context in order to sell a book, I tend to keep walking.

Well, someone is buying Herodotus’ Histories, so you are somewhat off base.

The big Landmark edition came out not too long ago (5 years). Hackett are doing an edition. Tom Holland’s translation is due out this spring. This is not to mention the scholarly editions, as these three are meant to appeal to a broad audience.

It’s striking that the two paras on “background” at that WKPD link don’t mention the most striking feature of the background, namely that the insurgents/terrorists/heroes of the proletariat (what would we call them nowadays?) were Communists, and overwhelmingly Chinese. The Malays on the whole didn’t much care for them. Whether the village concerned was a Chinese or Malay settlement I don’t know, but either way it would be better if WKPD had reported that too, so that one could compare the incident with the “background”.

The Dalai clique takes for granted that with the backing of the only superpower in the world, there is hope for so-called “Tibet independence.” In fact, the U.S. has not met all of the Dalai Lama’s demands.